Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Yemen's Electricity Ministry's Employee Acid Attacked

Yemen's Electricity and Energy Ministry has always been notorious for its corruption. It won't be an exaggeration to say that it is the top ministry which has the biggest negative impact on the citizens with it's utter bad performance. It's responsible of handling all those incidents when the country gets in total blackout. On the news the blackouts are reported as caused by some tribal attacks. That's not necessarily true. There is a huge element of corruption in the ministry, in which electricity has became a powerful card to pressurize the citizens. Accordingly, and thankfully, a group of Yemeni activists have been mobilizing the people and campaigning against the ministry's corruption and the blackouts, with a campaign established in June 2013 named, 'Menawera ya Hokoma w al Sha'ab tafi'.

One of the active members in the action and also an employee at the ministry, Adnan Al-Madani had to pay a painful price for his courage and activity. On "September 7th, 2014 at eight o’clock in the morning while he was on his way to the headquarters of the Ministry, an acid has been thrown to Adnan’s face by unidentified people who were riding a motorcycle and fled after1."

The unfortunate incident was captured by a surveillance camera in a nearby building2:

I asked one of the members in the campaign, Ghada Al-Wazeer if she knows Adnan in person? "yes, I do know him personally," she replied, "he was the one giving us all the corruption-related documents, and before I left to the US, we organized an event at the Basement with him."

"I believe he was targeted because of his activism in the campaign. Plus, he has been threatened many times and the last time was 2 days before the incident, and other employees at the ministry who are following up the Adnan's case are being threatened now."

Adnan has been hospitalized to Jordan and he remains in a critical condition. His colleagues at the ministry try to send him moral support through their Facebook page here.